Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

I've got plenty of caps left to write about featuring the letter "B" in the logo however I'm looking to wind down this current theme so that I can move onto other subject matters that I've been meaning to cover. Until then though, I must fall back on one of my favorite parlor tricks which is featuring yet another obsolete team identity from the mid-1990's! This week's Binghamton Mets snapback is one I estimate to be from 1995-96. Binghamton sported this exact logo design from 1995 all up until 2017 which was the year they rebranded as the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, which is the team's name currently. I have no idea how the bee in the logo is connected to the city however the reason for the team's new name stems from Binghamton being known as "The Carousel Capital of the World". The lack of New Era flag branding on the sweatband tags hints this is a pre-1997 cap. Because this logo only first appeared in 1995, I'd say this cap is from th

Shortly after publishing last week's Bangor Blue Ox post , I realized that I was in the midst of a nice little streak of featuring hats from Northeast cities whose name begin with the letter "B" (ie. Buffalo, NY and Bangor, ME) thus this Batavia Clippers retro cap from Ebbets Field Flannels seemed like a natural fit for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection.  Batavia's affiliation with the Philadelphia Phillies lasted from 1988-2006 and the team heavily leaned on their parent club when it came to uniform design for the first ten years of their arrangement, after which they rebranded as the Batavia Muckdogs. This permutation of the Phillies "P" into a "B" was only in use from 1991 and 1992 but because those were two prime years during the height of my early obsession with baseball, this logo is the first one that comes to mind whenever the Batavia Clippers are discussed. I cannot say enough good things about the quality Ebbets put forth on

I hope everyone has enjoyed the "Buffalove" over the past five weeks and if you didn't that's ok because at least you got to momentarily experience the blog delving into the realm of football, which was definitely a new sort of sensation for me after all these years! Another first that I'm excited about is this week's Bangor Blue Ox cap is the first-ever Northeast League cap to be featured here. It might seem hard to believe that even in this blog's tenth year  I'm still finding new leagues to write about but I think the sheer volume of obscure teams out there is a testament to the widespread reach that baseball has across this country. This cap came to me as part of a larger lot purchase and I have to admit I had no idea what team used this logo when I first saw it. Thankfully the hat nerds on Instagram were out in full force that day and provided me with an answer within minutes! The sweatband on this cap is rather soiled and I have to admit I'm

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is a retro production of a 1959 Buffalo Bisons cap and let me tell y'all, in an alternate timeline this hat would be taking us into a Super Bowl weekend where the Buffalo Bills would be playing in the big game for the first time since 1994! Well, if "if's" and "but's" were candy and nuts that would be friggin' awesome because that would mean my plan of featuring Buffalo hats up through the Super Bowl came together. But it didn't. But  that doesn't matter because this logo's simplicity is just too perfect to pass up this week. I can't imagine anyone on the street will recognize this logo for what it is but that's ok. Maybe I'll hear "Boston Sucks" or perhaps someone will think it's a Birmingham Barons cap. Whatever happens, I'm ready for it because I will hit them with the story behind this hat no matter what! Made in U.S.A. is something Ebbets Field Flannels has

The luck in my Buffalove well seems to have run dry but even though the Bills won't be in the Super Bowl, nothing is going to stand in the way of the Buffalo posts that I had planned for the rest of the playoffs. For this week, that means a showcase of the Buffalo Bisons team store's retro production of the cap I featured last week, which in case you needed a reminder,  is the design the team wore from 1988-92. The "B" here is a lot more beefed up than what we saw on the vintage cap last week but for some reason I'm not beefing ! Nothing much to report on here, but in case you were wondering the unseen portion of the New Era tag states that the cap was Made in China. Sad! It's a nice touch when the retro caps feature the grey underbrim as it gives the whole thing a more vintage feel all around.  In the captions earlier I mentioned that I wasn't bothered about this cap's logo not being 1:1 with the vintage version that I own and frankly, I think that is

I hope y'all had fun these past few weeks with the NFL hats but unfortunately, my well of Buffalo Bills caps has run dry. Rushing out to buy more caps for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday isn't an option which means it's the perfect time to dig into my reserves for a vintage Buffalo Bisons cap that I estimate to have been worn between 1988 and 1992. The period during which this cap logo was worn represents a generally happy time for all three of Buffalo's main sports clubs but especially for the city's football team as the Bills' 12-4 record was good enough to put them at the top of their division for the first time in almost a decade.   Approximating years to sweatband tags on caps this old can be a chore but thanks to the handy reference by Paul Carr on The Ballcap Blog , it's a cinch. From there I was able to confirm this particular New Era tag and the "LOT/PRICE" size tag were used in 1988 and 1989! The mesh on this cap is unbelievably fres

We're halfway through the first month of 2021 and I'm still feeling good about about this year so far. Last week's  Buffalo Bills  hat didn't bring any misfortune upon their Wild Card matchup against the Colts and I'm hoping to keep the mojo alive with another Bills cap this week. In last week's post, I offered my take on the long-established maxim “out with the old, in with the new” in regards to the inspiration behind my selection of the first hats of the year and this early-era Buffalo retro from Mitchell & Ness fits the bill (I'm sorry) perfectly. That bison might not look speedy but it travels further in the wayback machine than last week's cap as this logo design was retired after the 1973 season. The "new" component of the expression  “out with the old, in with the new”  lies in the fact that I've never once written about a Mitchell & Ness cap on this blog before now so here's to another first, folks! Like last week'